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A jam submission

Uplifting OceanView game page

Therapeutic cozy game
Submitted by gainax2k1 — 11 hours, 37 minutes before the deadline
Rated by 16 people so far
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Uplifting Ocean's itch.io page

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how the game fits the uplifting theme?
It's a therapeutic cozy narative game that guides the player through various excercises that help with anxiety, depression, and trauma related feelings

how the game fits the ocean theme?
It's in the ocean! You play as a cat in a submarine that's crashed and sunk. Various sea creatures stop by and offer help, both mentally and physically.

please If you used any per-made assets or AI generated content credit them
No AI generated content. I used a color pallete for Aseprite "Jehkoba32" (Palette by Jehkoba: https://lospec.com/palette-list/jehkoba32

Can you vote for other entries during the voting period? How many?
I can vote for any that run in browser or on linux.

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Comments

Submitted

First of all, this style is taking me right back to my childhood playing games on the computer. I love the dialogue, it felt very natural and well written. The personalities of the characters were thoughtful and they matched the exercises really well, I particularly loved the eel. The animation and music was very effective. Maybe the kitty could do animations based on what part of the exercise you are in, like sniffing or listening or breathing. I also think the game would benefit from a back button because sometimes I click continue when I really shouldn't yet haha. Overall, I think this is a very effective tool and a fun way to teach or do anti-anxiety exercises. Looking forward to seeing what you make next :-)

Submitted(+1)

Thank you for sharing the exercises you find useful. 

I think you could integrate some of them more into the virtual world - like for example "Name 5 things you see" can be turned into a small point and click game. Another opportunity - 3 things about hearing. The other senses are physical and not relevant to a video game.

The same applies to the breathing exercise - it could be a small video game. Maybe even include microphone sounds - I have been researching that option and will come back to it some day.

This is not criticism but a challenge to do more. I think there are a lot of (mobile,web) self-help apps, including the famous SuperBetter which was among the first, that fail at making the exercises actionable and instead rely on self reporting. But video games are a medium that is more interactive! It has a lot of potential to be very impactful. Unfortunately game studios predominantly focus on violence but we as indie developers can and are changing that little by little. There should be more games that include such useful exercises as those you refer to.

Good luck and keep going!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for checking out the game and all the feedback! I struggled to get everything working and as polished as I did in the time I had (I'm still very new to Godot/game dev). I had ideas for more interactive elements, but they got cut. Ideally, there would be things like hold a button while you're breathing in with a timer/animation/feedback element for some amount of time, then a matching exhaling thing. I thought about having a text interface thing for naming things, but I haven't done that yet (lol), and I feel like I would need some sort of text parsing/censoring system (I can only imagine people misusing it). Maybe some sort of click/check-box system, or a  bespoke scene where people can interact with to find some of the elements for the senses, etc.  As I develop my skillset, I would like to come back and revisit this and flesh it out.

Thanks again!

Submitted(+1)

Very cute, and felt like it could be useful in a therapy setting especially for kids with anxiety/panic attacks or similar. 

 It reminded me a bit of the Reader Rabbit games I used to play when I was young, although those were more focused on teaching math/reading/spelling/etc. If you're interested in making more educational-type games I'd recommend looking them up just for some examples of the kind of gameplay they used! They're from the late '80s/early 90's, but there should at least be youtube videos of the gameplay. 

Developer

Thank you! I was trying for that kind of feel, the old edutainment cd-roms era. I am still learning how to do all this (just getting the dialog system made and *working* took forever! But, now I know how to go about it, and a bunch of other stuff. Adding more interactive elements was something I wanted in the beginning, but got cut due to time. I focused on polishing the stuff I had done and working. I might continue work on it in the future. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

This game was simple but well made. Loved the narrative. It felt good.

Submitted(+1)

This game feels like a special aid for people with panic attacks! I love it.

Submitted(+1)

This game is healthy! Thanks)

Submitted(+1)

YO THIS GAME IS SICK! it's really uplifting and the art is cute